


Letters

by maximum_camping



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-17 05:32:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16089065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maximum_camping/pseuds/maximum_camping





	1. A

I just want to know why you did it. Because I do think you’re a good person, that or you’re a good actor, because you listened to what they said to you and you didn’t apologise but you were nice to me. You tried, anyway, and it was awkward but it was an attempt and I can appreciate that. But I still want to know what drove you to say that, what was chipping away at you so much that you had to hurt me instead.

The chances of you finding this is astronomical: KILL YOURSELF SO WE DON'T HAVE TO LOOK AT YOUR UGLY FACE, you left. I shouldn't have turned on anonymous messages but I wanted others to find out more about me. Ask questions. I got hate. I’m not sure whether it would’ve hurt more delivered in person or that message on the screen. Anonymous. So I didn’t even know who did it, so I could imagine just how many people thought that. And for the first week or two I did. I cried, I got it over with; I blocked and reported it but god, I wish I could block it from my brain. It doesn’t bother me that much – or at least consciously – but I can still remember it. Your words have lost their sting but they hurt at the time.

I think what hurt me most was how you did it. You singled me out (was it because I was hardly ever there? Was I in the right time, right there, for you?) and you isolated me so slowly I didn’t even realise that it was bullying. I just thought it was girls being girls. It happened to everyone at some point. Except no, it doesn’t; gossip happens, fallings-out happen, bullying doesn’t. You isolated me and I can pinpoint the first time I almost cried at school. I never cried there.

It was the tents. We were looking for a group to find: me, and (y)our two friends who were really close, and you had one open space in your group. So I ask if I can join and you’re still deciding – it wouldn’t be fair on the friends, would it, because there’s three of you – and I’m sick the next day. I’m always sick and that’s another matter. I come back and ask if I can join and you say no, you’ve found someone and your friends have found places. I say your friends because that’s when the divide grew too big to ignore. I stared up at the ceiling blinking back tears even as I told you it was fine.

I ended up with some nice girls, but they weren’t my friends, and I was an intruder. And you disappeared into your tent during free time and I barely saw you, and I guess that was meant to hurt me.

Our arguments happened over text, mainly, and I remember the time that I was at a restaurant with my family, trying to look happy. The night already started off bad but that just made it worse. I put on a mask and, I didn’t know it then, but I was good at masks.

It happened in Drama – ironic in more ways than one – when you shoved me out of your group again. You’d always say sorry, but we’re a five and we have to go in fours, and you’d always kick me out to go with the unpopular, loser boys. So one day we sat down in a circle and you pushed me, just a little, so I ended up sitting next to a boy. I wasn’t bothered with them, only you, and I went off at you as much as a quiet bullied kid can. I raised my voice – I don’t think I yelled – and told you that you were so immature, that you needed to grow up, that they were only boys and that they didn’t have a disease. I decided then and there that I was done with all your bullshit and looking back I wished that I’d slapped you or something. I don’t do that often.

It happened in Geography – I got put next to the ‘worst’ of the boys, at the back of the class in the corner. I asked him about the laptop he had, for his wrist issues from a bad break, and apologised for being left-handed and elbowing him too much. And we always had Geography, lunch, then drama. I made friends with you in Geography – we even googled Chernobyl at the back of the class, on my phone, once, which is a rebellion for us – and eventually, I’d always tell him that I’d see him in drama. I made friends with him, and his friends, and even if I became a ‘loser’ (which I’d been from the beginning) I had actual friends and I was happy for once. I can thank you for that.

And the corridor next to the room where it all happened, became our hangout. We holed up in a corner, with decent wifi, and enjoyed ourselves. We laughed, joked, talked; and we ate in the corridors, which wasn’t allowed, and we hung around in corridors, which wasn’t allowed. The teachers in the department never cared that we’d moved in. They joked with us sometimes. And even when the ‘no phones except in form’ rule was implemented they walked right past us. It was a quiet sort of rebellion, if I could even call it that. And one or two of the popular kids found us, but we got an exemption from the rules for free and a place to sit without teachers breathing down our backs. The boys got bullied by the other boys but they never cared and I envied that. But nonetheless, we found our little haven – and in summer, sat under a tree in the far corner of the school grounds creatively named ‘The Tree’, as opposed to ‘corridor’ – and I loved it.

Then another boy picked on me. Quite a few did, just to mess with me, but he took it further.

Maybe the boy I sat next to in Geography will get his own one. But for now, I can thank you for the real friends, and I can forgive you because you made an effort to be nice to me, or at least not be mean. You seem like a better person than the boy (not Geography boy) and you really did leave me alone. But you made me build up my walls and I still can’t quite get past them and that’s my problem, years later. So I can forgive you but I still think about you and I still wish I got to hear a proper apology – there wasn’t an official one, just a divide between ‘bully’ and ‘former bully’


	2. B

I don't know where I begin with you.

What made you do it? What made you look at me and decide that I needed to feel even worse? Why the hell would you do that to me?

You aren't popular and I'm not popular, but that's different. I never cared too much after my first year of trying and you always sat just on the fringes. People know you because you're friends with someone else and you're their comic relief, with your horrible dirty jokes and moaning and homophobia. 

You pull the cord out of my computer one day, wiping all my work, and don't even bother to pretend it was an accident. You have the nerve to deny you did anything. I tell you I'm going somewhere else where I don't have idiots messing with my work and you aren't even fazed. I'm your free entertainment.

You 'accidentally' throw my work away and mutter things under your breath and spread some kind of rumour; my name is said quietly, watching me. You do a million little things that are destroying the little tiny bit of confidence and you still do to this day.

I'd like to lie and say that of course I forgive you. I can't. You aren't like the person before you, you never stop and you seem to relish in it. You're just as horrible as the day I met you and I soon hope you realise it.


	3. C

You and your friends are boys and that's relevant because you really don't understand that girls are people too. You think we - or maybe it's just girls you don't respect - are toys for your experiments and nobody ever corrects you. If this is my generation then count me out.

The first time is in Art. I'm sitting at my table alone, a desk pushed out on its own because there's too many of us, keeping my head lowered over my sketchbook. I am not good at art nor do I like it that much but I can pretend to be busy. You and your table are semi popular and of course you're having fun. That, or you're bored: maybe flicking between both. And so you - maybe one of your friends - comes up with a bright idea.

You approach me with a grin on your face - amused, not nervous - and ask me if I'll go out with you. It's a joke. It's painfully obvious to everyone that it's a joke. Through gritted teeth I tell you no because if I speak properly I might just start crying. To you and your friends it's a hilarious joke: you asked _her_ out and you got 'rejected' by the lowest of the low. To me it means a whole lot more than that. That the only way anyone will ever date me is such a joke to you, that nobody will ever actually care.

I wish I told you that.

The second time is in Music - spread out over a few rooms, the teacher can't watch everyone at once - and it's not you but your friend, though maybe you're there too. It's February. Your friend has a guitar he can't play and all of you burst into our room. He starts singing, well, wailing in a deliberate parody of singing, and 'asks' me to be his valentine. Again, talking to me is such a joke. I don't tell you no. I get up and shut the door and then keep practicing the piano, pretending that nothing even happened in the first place.

The last time is in Art again. The next year. It's supposed to have stopped but of course it hasn't - it won't. It's better but I'll go on until the day I leave. There is a piano in the middle of the room that's been sort of dissected for an art project, so you can see all the mechanisms inside it. Someone's written music notes on the side of it in a silver pen, and words to go along with it. You Are My Sunshine. And you recite that verse to me, grinning again, and I tell you to leave me alone. 

Good thing I never liked that song in the first place or you'd just have ruined it for me.


End file.
